Fewer Americans believe JFK assassination conspiracy theories

A new poll shows that the percentage of Americans who think there was a conspiracy behind the murder of President John Kennedy has declined by 16 points over the past decade. But most people — presumably including millions who don’t actually know many details of the event — still say Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone.

A clear majority of Americans still suspect there was a conspiracy behind President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, but the percentage who believe accused shooter Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone is at its highest level since the mid-1960s, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll.

According to the AP-GfK survey, conducted in mid-April, 59 percent of Americans think multiple people were involved in a conspiracy to kill the president, while 24 percent think Oswald acted alone, and 16 percent are unsure. A 2003 Gallup poll found that 75 percent of Americans felt there was a conspiracy.

As the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s death approaches, the number of Americans who believe Oswald acted alone is at its highest since the period three years after the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination, when 36 percent said one man was responsible.

President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed the Warren Commission on Nov. 29, 1963, to investigate both Kennedy’s assassination and the killing of Oswald days later. The commission concluded that Oswald was the lone gunman.

Those who were adults in 1963 were almost as likely as younger Americans to say that Kennedy’s killing was a conspiracy involving multiple people — 55 percent, compared to 61 percent.

Maybe somebody better tell John Kerry he better get with the supposed majority and put the conspiracy theories that Oswald didn’t act alone out of his thoughts.

I’m with John Kerry on this. But as John Kerry said, he’s not going to elaborate. I don’t blame him because the gate keepers who believe every official investigation is the truth, the complete truth and nothing but the truth, will find every way to discredit anybody who doesn’t carry the official line no matter how flawed it is.

Interesting! From what I’ve seen, so far, the new documentaries, as well as the movie with Rob Lowe as Jack Kennedy, the conspiracy theorists aren’t going to get much, if any, support. What I believe about the conspiracy theories is that there are some things that make it reasonable to WONDER if someone besides Oswald was involved. It is definitely possible that some groups that were happy to see the president dead, like the Soviet Union, Cuba, and the Mafia. Perhaps one or more of them would have devised a plan to assassinate the president, had Oswald not beat them to it. However, 50 years has not provided any hard evidence to support those theories.

I was nine years old, on 22 November, 1963 and I remember it well. As the daughter of a career Marine, I think it impacted me especially hard. My first thoughts included fear that I would get home that day and find my dad getting ready to leave for war.

I never read the Warren Report, but I sure heard a lot about it, on TV, Radio, magazines, newspapers, and my parents’ talking. I didn’t think there was much possibility that one man could have done it, and I believed that for thirty years.

Twenty years ago, one of the major networks put out a new documentary on it. The advertising for the show sounded like it was really going to be something big. They claimed to have done their best not to leave a single stone unturned. I thought “Wow, they are finally going to find out what really happened!” At the end, I was SO disappointed! They said that they could prove that there wasn’t any more to it than just that Oswald did what the Warren report said he did, but that they just hadn’t been able to find anything. I was very disappointed!

A few years later, I got the internet and started researching it. Of course it wasn’t too long after that that, that new documentaries were being produced. I recorded them and watched them repeatedly, and checked their claims as much as I could. There were several facts that I hadn’t known, which really shed light onto the whole thing, such as the fact that Oswald worked in the Texas School Book Depository.

By a decade ago, I was totally convinced that the “lone gunman theory” was actually true.

Since the advent of the internet, I’ve been amazed at the imaginations of some of the conspiracy theorists. They are all SO convinced, and feel they have SO much evidence. One decided that JD Tippet killed Kennedy and then hurried over to Oak Cliff in time to be shot by Oswald.

One of the silliest ones, that was most obviously thought up by someone who knew very little of the facts about it, came from my own sister. It may be one you haven’t heard before. She says that the Mafia did it. Not that saying the Mafia did it is new, but there are details about why they supposedly hired Jack Ruby to kill Oswald. She knows that because she has seen a picture of Jack Ruby with a leader of the Mafia, gambling together in Cuba, in the 50s. She says that they made a deal that, since Ruby was dying of cancer, if he would take out Oswald, the Mafia would support Ruby’s wife and kids after he had died. My first response was, “Uh, WHAT on Earth?” I told her that Ruby was never married and had no kids, and that he wasn’t diagnosed with cancer until three years later. I searched and searched, on the internet, to see if there might possibly have been something I didn’t know about. I searched under terms like “Ruby’s wife”, “When was Jack Ruby married?”, “Jack Ruby’s son/daughter” and “How many children did Jack Ruby have?” Of course, the only responses I got were things where the words existed in the same document, but not in relation to each other.

Could any writers anywhere come up with a better story than this? I wish it HAD been written by some genius, rather than being true?

Lamar Waldron and Tom Hartmann put together a fairly compelling scenario about the JFK assassination. It’s called Legacy of Secrecy. It’s not a simple situation. There were many players and motives in place.

I’ve heard Lamar Waldron interviewed many times. He knows his stuff and the timelines involved.

All I know for certain is I don’t believe the official story, no way. There’s just too many red flags. But, I don’t sit up and ponder it very much either.

Just as a reminder of how the truth is stretched and in a more current setting, Osama Bin Laden has been used as the boogyman supposedly behind 911 even to this day, but not even the FBI believed that. Although OBL was on the to 10 wanted list, his association with 911 was never noted. There were bombings attributed to him on his rap sheet but never was he noted, not even as a co-conspirator of the 911 event. That’s not how the politicians tell the story though.